Political context and media trust: Three voting analysis in Peru

Abstract

Adding to the growing concern about the crisis in journalism due to technological and political changes is the decline in trust and credibility in the media. The literature review reveals that there are few studies examining the impact of political contexts on the decline in trust. The concepts of credibility and trust are analyzed, opting for trust because it consists of a projection of the citizen on his interaction with the media. They also compare the different ways of measuring this problem, finding that the proposal of Kohring and Matthes (2007) is the most consistent. To analyze the impact of the political context on trust, 6 panels are compared in 3 votes: a recall, a presidential election, and a metropolitan election with probabilistic samples. The results show that trust is not homogeneous, but depends on the intensity of the electoral process. It is also observed that the audience does not trust the plural performance and the informative quality of the media to the same extent, but rather trusts them more due to the greater amount of news and its relevance. Consequently, public perceptions may be influenced by the intensity of journalistic production, associated with constant updates that seek to connect the public with events. The findings of this article also suggest that trust in journalistic information during elections is poorly supported by journalists' ability to contribute to public debate and represent diverse voices in the country.